Category Archives: ANTIFRACKING

It’s official: Oklahoma now has more earthquakes than anywhere else in the world, according to a spokesman from the Oklahoma Corporation Commission (OCC), which oversees the Sooner State’s oil and gas industry.

Several earthquakes have struck Oklahoma in just these past four days. As Oklahoma Corporation Commission spokesman Matt Skinner said about the state’s increased seismic activity, “We’ve got an earthquake issue.” Photo credit:Earthquaketrack.com

“We have had 15 [earthquakes] in Medford since 5 o’clock Saturday morning,” said spokesman Matt Skinner on Nov. 9, according to the Enid News. “We’ve got an earthquake issue.”

“OCC has developed areas of interest, where earthquake clusters have occurred. A cluster is two earthquakes within a half mile of each other, with one measuring at least magnitude 3.2. Originally, they were three-mile circles, then six-mile circles. The circles grew in number and now encompass a very large area of Oklahoma—about 9,000 square miles in all, [Skinner] said,” reported the Enid News.

Shockingly, and under Governor Brown’s watch, oil and gas companies have been illegally dumping billions of gallons of wastewater from drilling and fracking into protected California aquifers. Something needs to be done, and quickly, in order to protect the Golden’s State precious water supply.

Send a message to Governor Brown and demand that he not only shut down the 2,500 illegal injection wells, but also issue an emergency moratorium on fracking— as this is just one more example of how reckless the oil and gas industry is and how little regard they have for our most essential resources.

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Fracking and other unconventional methods of extracting oil and natural gas come with intensive drilling and mining, massive amounts of toxic waste, air pollution and pervasive infrastructure that threatens our essential food and water resources.

To frack a well, operators mix millions of gallons of water with tens of thousands of gallons of chemicals, including some known to cause cancer, and then pump it all into the earth at extreme pressure to try to break up rock formations so oil and natural gas might flow.

Drilling and fracking:

require millions of gallons of water for each well, competing with farmers for local water supplies.

produce massive amounts of toxic and even radioactive waste with no good disposal options.

contaminate sources of drinking water as a result of disposal problems and the thousands of leaks and spills every year.

can lead houses and water wells to explode, due to contamination from methane and other harmful gases.

bring untold costs to local communities, from declines in agriculture, real estate and tourism to road damage, public health problems and increased demand for social services.

You can find more information in our reports and fact sheets on our site: